


The Awkward Life and Times of Mike Ross (Fool's Gold)

by mockturtletale



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:25:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the image of Harvey’s skin has come a relentless need to see more and Mike doesn’t yet know if it’s a natural curiosity, a simple sense of wonder that he has to re-learn to ignore or whether it’s more than that, and more than he can overcome. But he has a feeling that if Harvey keeps flashing his wrists like a geisha down on her luck, Mike’s going to have to find out sooner than he’d like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Awkward Life and Times of Mike Ross (Fool's Gold)

**Notes** : Written for [this prompt](http://suitsmeme.livejournal.com/2038.html?thread=1667318#t1667318) in the [Suits Kink Meme](http://suitsmeme.livejournal.com/). Thank you to the lovely OP for the wonderful prompt! Thank you to everyone who left such kind and encouraging feedback on this as I posted it. ♥

 

 

 

 

 

It’s true that Mike put exactly _no_ thought into what life as a lawyer might be like before it became his reality, but he’s absolutely sure that should he have - he wouldn’t have thought it’d include nearly as much socializing as it actually does. Country club lunches, tennis matches, black tie dinners, coffee mornings, receptions, weddings, funerals, gallery openings, film premieres and on one particularly painful occasion - the theatre. It’s nowhere near as much fun as it sounds and worst of all - it’s almost all on his own time. His salary is generous, but no amount of money will ever be able to adequately compensate him for having seen Louis in a towel. Something about the fact that there was some element of free will exercised in that and all of Mike’s other many social appearances since he became A Lawyer would keep him awake at night were it not for the fact that he doesn’t have time to sleep as it is.

Currently, he hasn’t slept in four days and he’s spending ‘his’ Saturday trekking across the city to meet Harvey. Today they’re going to some kind of pointless gathering on a yacht, of all things. It’s going to be excruciatingly boring, a high society thing that there is no danger of Mike feeling anything close to comfortable at, but Harvey calls and Mike comes running and that’s how it’s set to stand until death or Mike’s getting fired do they part.

Mike thinks he should sound more upset about this, at the very least mildly irritated, but he also tries not to lie to himself when it’s not absolutely necessary so he can’t begrudge himself what tends to amount to at best dazed frustration. It’s become something of a sore point for the other associates that Mike is not just the only exclusively ‘claimed’ protégé, but also as they’ve nicknamed him - “arm candy barbie”. He’s the only associate that gets dragged to these events when they’re not mandatory for the entire firm. He still doesn’t know why this is. Quasi-genius or not, he can’t figure out for the life of him why Harvey insists on dragging him to these things when more times than not this just means making excuses for Mike when he unknowingly commits some kind of archaic social faux pas or listing all of the ways in which he’ll make Mike’s life miserable if he doesn’t stand up straight and behave.

And still, Mike finds that even when he gets an hour to himself, an afternoon with nothing to do beyond collapsing onto his cheap couch to watch static-y baseball via stolen cable safe in the knowledge that he can drink his crappy beer free from Harvey’s continuing lecture series on Ways In Which Mike Ross Fails To Be Adequate, it’s not the expensive burn of scotch he could never afford or the company of people who could buy and sell him that he misses, but Harvey. Harvey makes the most mind numbingly boring people and places bearable - more than that - _enjoyable_. It’s kind of embarrassing, but Mike thinks Harvey could make anything interesting and worthwhile. He makes Mike feel interesting and worthwhile, even when he’s berating him for being exactly the opposite.

Everyone talks about their weird mentor / devotee vibe and Mike is always quick to interrupt with protests that they’re colleagues, they’re co-workers, yeah Harvey has taken him under his wing but that’s the very nature of their positions, there’s nothing strange about it, he’s just there to learn.

That’s all true, but Mike has to admit as he tries not to run up the steps to Harvey’s building that his respect for Harvey has become something of an awkward fanboy situation. It’s not that surprising. Mike has always been drawn to confidence backed up in spades by capability and Harvey is the surest example of that he’s ever come across.

In summation: Mike thinks Harvey is twenty five different kinds of awesome so although he’ll do a very impressive job of claiming otherwise, he really doesn’t mind spending his weekends with him too.

And then he sees Harvey mostly naked.

He gets to the door of Harvey’s condo and finds it open, flung wide. He’d worry he was interrupting a burglary were it not for the fact that this is Manhattan and Harvey’s building has more security staff than most banks, not to mention cameras monitoring every elevator and hallway. Plus there’s a note stuck to the door that says “ **Don’t be stupid, I haven’t been robbed.** Come in and don’t make a mess, I’m running late and can’t multi-task showering and supervising you.” Harvey’s willing admission of mortality is probably even more worrying than a suspected robbery, Mike is thinking to himself as he pushes the door closed behind him, the post-it note stuck to his index finger. He wanders through the condo, trailing his fingers along the walls just because an opportunity to do so has presented itself. He’s tipping a very sparse and expensive looking finger painted to sit slightly crooked on the wall when he hears the snick of a door and Harvey calls out “Mike?”

“Yep. I’m early, you’re running late, the world as we know it has come to an end.”

“I’m not _late_ , I’m simply slightly behind schedule, I don’t think we have to surrender to dystopian apocalypse just yet, you petty child.”

Mike doesn’t answer, too busy giggling to himself as he flips all of the coasters on Harvey’s dining room table upside down.

“Mike!?”

“There is no Mike, only zuul,” Mike whispers, and starts off in the direction that Harvey’s voice is coming from.

Rationally, he should at least acknowledge the possibility that Harvey is in some state of undress still, presumably having just stepped out of the shower, but it’s been a few minutes and it feels weird and strange to be standing in someone’s apartment speaking to them without being able to see them, so he’ll take that excuse to justify his pushing open Harvey’s bedroom door then, thank you.

(Not very much at all stands to justify the fact that once he opens the door and sees the sights that await him, his instinctual reaction here is to lean against the door jam and just take it all in, so we’ll ignore that aspect of events, shall we?)

Harvey is standing with his back to Mike, one hand scrubbing a towel through his hair. Thin streams of water are running in rivulets down his back toward the waistband of his black briefs - the only clothing he’s wearing. It’s not a lie to say that Mike has never thought about Harvey naked before. It’s also not a lie to say that he’s thinking about it now. Because Harvey is kind of …. fantastically attractive. His body is _ridiculous_. As nice as his suits are, and Mike can admit that they fit him very very well indeed, what he sees here makes him think of them in terms of some analogy Harvey would probably make about a classic car with fine bodywork that conceals a truly phenomenal engine. Harvey would go on to say something about the powerful tool of the misdirect, the age old trick of having your enemy make the fatal mistake to underestimate you, and Mike is sure that he’d be right if he thought about that a little more, but he’s currently too busy realizing his fatal mistake of underestimating Harvey. Because Harvey isn’t his enemy and that makes this even worse.

Mike’s eyes track the trail of water as it runs from the nape of Harvey’s neck down between defined shoulder blades, framed by firm muscle that ripples along Harvey’s biceps down into tanned, capable forearms and slim wrists that reveal the gentle set of bones suggested by the lines in his forearms, traced by visibly raised veins that look off putting in abundance on body builders but just sit right and inviting along Harvey’s arms. His skin is golden all over, a natural olive shade deepened and set by his recent business trip to the south of France, and still slick with rapidly drying water it shines in the sunlight. Mike can just make out the hint of his spine where it dips at his waist before it rises into the slope of his ass and he has honest to god dimples just above the waistband of his briefs, little indents that deepen when his hips shift and he changes hands, dragging the towel down his chest. His shoulders set with the motion, tendons appearing at the side of his throat where he’s angled slightly looking over his shoulder and then he turns to face Mike. His chest is _art_ and Mike is so jealous, so suddenly affronted to know that Harvey is this smart, this charming and also _this_ absurdly, unfairly attractive. He has abs. Six of them. Cut little sections of muscle stacked like a ladder down into the v of his hips, the sharp angles of his hipbones that frame a perfectly flat section of abdomen beneath his bellybutton.

Mike means to look Harvey in the face then, to acknowledge his presence and maybe apologize for walking in on his boss half naked or something, but he gets distracted by clavicles so straight, so perfectly set and slightly protruding that Mike doesn’t wonder at the little hints of water gathered there, spilling down over Harvey’s surprisingly sparse chest hair and across generously defined pectorals.

“Have you never seen a real boy, Michael? Is this your first time experiencing the male form?”

Right. Speaking!

“Wha …. shut up! I was just not expecting you to be so ….. clothes-less.”

“When a boy walks into a man’s bedroom -”

“Oh my god shut UP. I … sorry. I’ll just -”

“Stand there and blush, congratulations you’ve already made a head start on your plans for today. Hand me that shirt while you gape, would you?”

And Harvey pads across the carpeted floor, reaches over Mike’s shoulder so he can intercept the white oxford button down that Mike lifts from where it’s hanging on his closet door. Harvey smells amazing, like some kind of citrus and spice that Mike assumes is his shower gel, but also a softer scent, something almost heavy and slightly sweet. It’s only when he thinks he can almost taste it that he realizes he’s still gaping. Goddamn it.

“Goddamn it. I mean .. are you almost ready? I’ll just wait for you in the -”

“Did you look over the notes I emailed you?”

Harvey is sitting on his bed now, buttoning up his shirt and brushing his hair back when it falls damply into his face, looking up at Mike like it’s totally normal that he’s half naked and they’re having a conversation in his bedroom.

And then he gets steadily less naked and they have a conversation in his bedroom and then they leave, attend the event which isn’t really that awful, although Mike protests loudly and often that it is, and they laugh at people they don’t know from across the deck of the yacht and they laugh at people they do know once they’re out of earshot, and the client seems satisfied that they made an appearance and represented their investment in the firm and Mike doesn’t even say or do anything that Harvey has to apologize for and the sun is warm on their faces and Mike finds the lap of the waves against the side of the boat kind of hypnotizing and soothing, washing over the strange clench of his stomach that he hadn’t really noticed until it sets with the evening sun.

It’s only when Mike gets home that night and steps into the shower that the root of his ache becomes apparent. Not to him, not really, not yet, but the issue still finds a way to make its presence known. And generously obvious.

He’s a relatively healthy and perfectly functional 24 year old man, so it’s not unusual that he gets the urge to jerk off that night. Having already done so twice this morning. Not strictly usual, but not categorically unusual either, and you can’t prove otherwise. He stands under the spray of his tiny cramped shower and lets the water beat down across his back, right under the nape of his neck, which he’s sure is pale and bony, not smooth and golden like Harvey’s had been. Mike thinks that his body probably doesn’t compare to Harvey’s at all, but that’s okay, he’s still totally attractive to some people, this he knows despite Harvey’s constant assurance that he’s a scrawny, fragile little runt. Mike does alright. He’s thinking back to the last girl he’d fucked, a perfect stranger he’d met at a bar after he’d stayed on after Harvey had left their celebratory drinks too early for Mike’s liking. Mike had wanted to stay, wanted to relax in an environment that wasn’t the office or the courthouse or his matchbox apartment. But he’d quickly gotten bored once Harvey left and had been on the verge of making likewise when he’d caught the eye of a girl sitting across the bar. She’d been tall, almost the same height as him, with cropped warm brown hair, swept back off her face and held in place with a headband. She was a little older than him, laughter lines crinkling around her mouth and her eyes and he found it attractive, liked the fact that she looked like she’d lived, like she could teach him a thing or two. She’d taken him back to her apartment with very little preamble and he thinks now of how she’d been just a little bit dominant in bed, a little aggressive with it. He wraps a soapy hand around his cock thinking about how she’d held him down across her sheets and set her teeth in his bottom lip, sucked at his mouth and ignored the arch of his hips under her until he’d had to plead for her. He turns and braces himself with a hand against the wall and fucks up into his fist when he thinks about how she’d ridden him, sure and relentless. His thumb brushes hard up under the head of his cock and he moans into his forearm when he thinks about her hands hard on his chest, finger nails scratching across his nipples and leaving red raw tracks singing across his skin and then her hands on him change and he’s thinking about rougher, larger hands gripping his biceps, fingers biting into his skin. Familiar hands with long, tanned fingers, familiar hands and familiar wrists with sharply outlined bones that Mike thinks about digging his own fingers into, pinning against a wall while his thigh pushes forward between Harvey’s, while he tastes that golden skin. He comes harder than he had this morning or yesterday or the day before that when he thinks about dragging his bottom lip to catch in under the sharp edge of Harvey’s hipbone, shoving his hand down into his black briefs and …...

And _fuck_. That did not go as intended.

 

 

_____________________________________________________________

 

 

  
Mike tries to put it out of his mind. So of course it’s all he can think about.

It’s not the fact that Harvey is a guy that’s throwing him off, because Mike is about as open-minded as they come. He realized when he was a teenager that he was as attracted to boys as he was to girls and it’s never been a problem since. Not for him, in any case.

Trevor had been another story.

Trevor had also been an asshole. And Mike had loved him. Not romantically, although Trevor never really truly believed that and Mike had thought it better to let him go on doubting than to have to reassure Trevor by telling him that his general lack of basic capability had been one of the most unattractive displays Mike had ever seen.

They never talked about it, never openly or honestly. Trevor pretended not to see Mike leave bars with guys and Mike pretended not to see the disgust in Trevor’s eyes the next day. Trevor wasn’t going to change and Mike wasn’t going to stop loving him and they kept the whole vicious cycle churning until it blew up in their faces and across the floor at Harvey’s feet.

Since then, Mike reveals his sexual preferences on a need to know basis. It’s not anyone’s business but his and besides, it’s 2011, anyone who has a problem with the sexuality of others has no business inflicting their shortcomings on Mike.

It hasn’t come up with Harvey.

Mike doesn’t think Harvey would have a problem with it. Mike had been surprised to see Harvey smirk and agree when he’d made an offhandedly approving comment on the ass of a passing bike messenger one day a couple of months ago. He hadn’t thought to think about what that said about Harvey’s preferences, but he finds himself wondering now.

Simply because when you accidentally touch yourself thinking about someone, it’s probably morally polite to try to ascertain whether or not they’d be offended by it.

And also a little bit because …...

Well, because the following Monday at work, Harvey stands up from behind his desk and moves to tug his shirt sleeves down after they’ve ridden up over his wrists and Mike’s eyes lock on the movement, follow the stretch of the palm of Harvey’s hands up into the oddly vulnerable glimpse of the thin skin across the veins in his wrist, skin that shocks Mike. He shouldn’t see it here, in the office, where it’s supposed to be covered up and kept locked away by starched cuffs and buttoned sleeves. And when he does … it’s not all he sees. His memory mojo kicks in full force and he’s hit with the image of Harvey before him, naked and bared to his waist like he’s standing behind his desk just as he had stood before Mike in his bedroom - dripping wet and gorgeous.

And maybe just a tiny hint of Mike’s wonder is born with the spark of interest the image sets off in him now, the sizzle of attraction that falls down his spine when he sees it replayed in full high definition technicolor detail.

It’s not new attraction. Not something he’s surprised to find or unfamiliar with, even though he can’t remember ever having looked at Harvey like that before, ever having seen him there in front of him and thought “I want.”

Because he hadn’t let himself wonder. Hadn’t strayed into territory of admission, because there is playing with fire and then there is being attracted to your boss and _then_ there is being attracted to your boss who has put both your careers on the line for you and beyond that still there is being attracted to your boss who does this every day and is Harvey Specter. That territory almost begins to describe the unknowable horrors of a situation in which Mike admits that he’s always been attracted to Harvey and now simply finds that fact impossible to ignore.

With the image of Harvey’s skin has come a relentless need to see more and Mike doesn’t yet know if it’s a natural curiosity, a simple sense of wonder that he has to re-learn to ignore or whether it’s more than that, and more than he can overcome. But he has a feeling that if Harvey keeps flashing his wrists like a geisha down on her luck, Mike’s going to have to find out sooner than he’d like.

 

 

  
__________________________________

 

 

 

Things get very quickly and very assuredly out of control after that and Mike thinks he tempted the fates by ever wondering if he could handle this.

Every time he looks at Harvey it’s like his clothes just fall away. All Mike can see is that image, replaying over and over again until he actually starts to get used to looking up and watching Harvey lecture him while Mike pictures him mostly naked. He’s becoming _accustomed_ to it.

Except that’s not lesson enough to show him the error of his ways, apparently, because when Harvey does something that really does reveal some small section of his skin …...

One afternoon after a difficult and lengthy partner conference in which Mike had almost chewed through his own lip trying not to shout explicates at Louis’ pathetic and not-at-all disguised attempts to discredit and provoke Harvey, Harvey himself is the one to unknowingly make Mike forget his livid incredulity at just how low some people will sink to try and trip up an adversary so beyond petty tricks and deceit that the attempts do nothing but reflect poorly on the instigator themselves . Mike’s packing up his things, loudly and moodily, mentally ranting to himself about all the various ways in which people lack even the most basic sense of decency and professional respect these days, when he makes the mistake of glancing across the room. Everyone else has hurried out, Louis whinging at Jessica’s heels as always and the other partners fleeing the weekly scene of another painfully embarrassing Louis tantrum like the faster they get away the sooner they’ll forget the horrors they’ve seen. Harvey, although the target as always, is the only one not in the slightest effected by any of this. He stands at the other side of the table and rises from his chair to stretch out his back, yawning so widely that he has to bring one hand up to his mouth to muffle the sound. He goes up on tip toe and arches languorously, the movement tugging his shirt up just an inch or two above where it’s tucked in behind his belt and he must have missed a button this morning because Mike glimpses a small rectangle of skin, a tiny space where his clothes part that shines like a diamond in the sun, Mike’s eyes zeroing in on it like he’s been subconsciously waiting for it to appear. He thinks he probably has. He worries he’s probably been waiting to see Harvey’s skin again ever since the last time he did, because seeing it now makes him feel focused, right and charged like he hasn’t in days. He watches Harvey stretch further like it’s happening in slow motion, like the pull of his shirt across his waist is happening tortuously slow, dragging the little window for new territories of skin as it goes, revealing a stretch of abdomen just beneath his naval divided by a trail of light golden brown hair that glints in the sunlight.

And somehow, this new patch of skin undoes him in ways that Harvey standing before him almost all the way naked couldn’t. Something about the fact that it’s just a glimpse, just a tease, right there in front of him and so far beyond his touch …. Mike’s hands tighten at the edge of the table, his knuckles white.

Harvey finishes stretching, tugs his jacket closed and buttons it like the cruelest kind of refusal and then he’s looking at Mike like _Mike_ is the one doing lap dances in the office.

It’s then that Mike realizes he maybe just made his disappointment at Harvey redressing more than a little audible. The groan comes back to him like a memory, but he knows from the look on Harvey’s face that it can’t have happened more than three seconds ago.

Harvey raises an eyebrow.

“I … stomach ache. Too much red bull. I need to eat something. Gotta go. Bye.”

And Mike runs.

Picturing your boss naked is bad enough, but in slow motion? And with an accompanying soundtrack that he can’t seem to control? Immediate action is required.

 

 

  
________________________________

 

 

  
And he really, truly means to commit himself to some kind of immediate and vigorous action besides that which he’s taking right now, he swears, but it’s gonna have to wait because cycling home half hard in his trousers had been one of the least enjoyable experiences of his young and glamorous life thus far and he figures he’s owed some serious self-compensation for his troubles.

He half runs mostly bow-legged up his stairs and starts unbuckling his belt before he even gets the door to his apartment open. Once inside he lets his pants fall halfway down his thighs and drops to his bed on his knees, getting a hand into his underwear and around his cock while the other searches in his sheets for the lube he’d left there this morning. He finds it and thinks he’s really going to have to stock up again soon, maybe look into buying in bulk if this problem persists because if he’d been a little jarred to find himself jerking off to thoughts of Harvey last time, you could say he’s gotten just a tad more comfortable with it by now.

It’s not even the fact that Harvey is his boss that had given him pause, nor the fact that he was slightly older, so far from Mike’s usual type that he’s basically a whole ‘nother species as far as Mike’s concerned. Nope, none of those things make it weird. What’s been giving Mike’s solo time an extra dirty little edge of uh-oh lately is the fact that it’s not generally advisable to regularly get off to thoughts of someone that you’ve got to see all day every day. Mike has found that this has been like an open invitation for associations he really doesn’t need right now. Harvey’s general presence has him constantly on edge and any small hint of skin or smiles or his fingers wrapped around a mug or a pen in his mouth and Mike is ready to go just like that. It’s like he’s accidentally conditioned his body to respond to the slightest suggestion of Harvey in anything approaching a state of disarray.

Mike can see no happy ending here, besides the one he’s making into his fist when he thinks back to Harvey naked in his bedroom, lets himself think about how he’d look here in front of him, naked across Mike’s crisp white sheets.

He falls face forward onto the bed, not even bothering to move or start the clean up process because all his energy is focused on feeling sorry for himself right now.

Harvey is like …. the hottest person Mike has ever seen that close up. He’s gorgeous and he’s brilliant and he’s so smart and so capable that sometimes Mike finds himself honest to god _awed_ by him, feels like he’s in the presence of some kind of demi-god unleashed on the earth to drive Mike out of his mind with lust.

Meanwhile there is Mike, his trusty sidekick - young and hapless and nothing much worth noticing at all and now a chronic masturbator to boot.

Harvey would be disgusted if he knew what Mike had just done, what he’s been doing three to five times a day for the last week and only so little because he’s been busy.

Harvey would probably fire him. Or worse - look at him like he had after he’d lost the mock trial - barely able to meet Mike’s eye for disappointment and sorry disbelief. He’d probably be furious. He’d grab Mike by the scruff of the neck and drag him into his office and push him down into the couch and ….

And Mike is going to need more lube sooner than he’d thought. His life is not the only thing getting increasingly hard around here.

 

 

  
________________________________

 

 

  
The very next day, the torture continues.

Mike is transfixed by Harvey, by the warm hint of his body always so close, so cruelly covered and not laid out for Mike’s hands and mouth like it is for his mind, constantly right there in his thoughts in ways it’ll never be in reality.

And it’s starting to make him crazy. He imagines Harvey is beginning to get closer to Mike than he really is. That when they sit in his office going over case files Harvey starts to lean in just a little bit further than he normally would, that when they grab hot dogs for lunch after hearings Harvey’s hands stay warm on Mike’s for a split second longer than is normal or necessary when he passes him a napkin, that when they say goodnight in the evenings it almost seems like Harvey is watching him, waiting for him to say or do something and Mike has no idea what that is because all the things he wants to say and do …... those are not things that Harvey would welcome. They are certainly not things that Mike has any right to imagine that open, encouraging look on Harvey’s face for. Everything Harvey does feels like an invitation now, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep turning that down, even though Mike _knows_ it’s all in his head, or rather - that it’s all because of what he keeps in his head.

But try as he might he can’t get rid of the image. Can’t keep himself from playing it over and over in his head like a constant projection in the background, blown up and spread across the walls of his thoughts like he has the time or presence of mind to watch repeats of the Harvey Specter Naked show 24/7.

And now the idea has started to seep into real life. It’s taken on a whole new role and begun shaping their every day interactions into openings, opportunities that appear like fissures just waiting for Mike to fall into them. He’s not just caught up in picturing it anymore, it’s started to spill over into everything else, suggestions of it appearing in places that Mike knows it can’t be.

Like when Harvey calls him into his office and asks him a million irrelevant questions about a case while he stands behind his desk and bends down to sift through documents, bends to concentrate on sheets of paper that he then pushes toward Mike and Mike knows they must have words on them, that those words must make sense and form sentences, but he can’t even figure out the logistics of a sheet of a paper right now because the way Harvey is leaning forward, one hand planted on his desk and his head hanging down low between his shoulders - it’s giving Mike a perfect view of the slight gape of his shirt collar on the back of his neck, the slope of his nape as it leads down into his back, which must be so warm with how the sunlight is falling on it through the window, would feel so good under the palms of Mike’s hands if he could get them up under Harvey’s jacket, press them up along the curve of his spine over his shirt.

Harvey’s other hand goes to his back then, like Mike thinking about it has made his skin prickle under the attention, and he reaches under his jacket to tug on the back of his shirt, to pull it down just the slightest bit, and the movement drags his collar lower still, reveals to Mike the first gentle knot of his spine rising up from the smooth stretch of skin between his shoulders and Mike bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, tastes it iron wet and bitter on his tongue.

Mike knows the questions aren’t irrelevant. He knows that Harvey doesn’t know that stretching that way reveals an acre of golden temptation to Mike. Just like he knows Harvey probably doesn’t even remember that Mike had seen him mostly naked not a week ago, and would be horrified to know that Mike has thought of little else since.

That doesn’t stop him from going home that night and sacrificing an hour of his precious sleep to let his mind wander instead to thoughts of what he might do if he got another chance to see Harvey naked, and what he might do to make that happen.

 

 

  
___________________________________________

 

 

  
Mike is then pleased and proud to say that he gets the situation totally under control. He’s completely adult and rational and he deals with his problems and puts them aside. He wipes any image of Harvey undressed or otherwise from his mind, shifts his focus firmly back to his work and gets on with living his life in ways that don’t center around lusting after his boss.

And then he wakes up from that particularly pleasant (if tame by recent standards) dream and finds himself still decidedly stuck in his hellish reality.

If _only_ it were a matter of wiping the image. One of more frustrating features of eidetic memory is that Mike has no control whatsoever over the things he remembers and for how long they are stored in his memory. The very nature of the thing is that he remembers everything. He can’t choose to forget what he made no decision to keep in the first place.

And it’s beginning to effect his work.

He doesn’t realize at first, such is the extent of his distraction. It’s Rachel that brings it to his attention.

She does so by hitting him in the face with a file.

“ _Ow_. What the hell was that for!?”

He picks the file up from where it’s fallen open on his desk and sees it’s a motion he’d written up and dropped off to be filed by a paralegal. Rachel, apparently.

“How long have you worked here, Mike?”

“One year, three weeks and four days?”

“Impressive.” Rachel says, raising an eyebrow in approval.

“But you might want to try and shine that little light of yours over your work, Rookie, you’re getting sloppy.”

A quick scan of the document reveals she’s right, now that he’s paying attention he picks up on two typos. Two. Lord have mercy.

“Rachel, I …...”

“Yeah, yeah. Relax, Mike, I caught it in time. I covered your ass. But I don’t get paid enough to do my work and yours, so don’t let it happen again or I’ll give you more than a papercut. Got it?”

“Yeah, yes, of course. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, thank you Rachel.”

“Mike …..”

Rachel leans in to perch on the edge of Mike’s desk, looks at him closely, concern clear across her face.

“Are you ….. is everything okay? I know Harvey works you hard, but you’d tell me if you couldn’t handle it, right? You’d tell someone?”

“I’m just tired, I promise. It’s been a long couple of weeks. I’ll catch up on some sleep and I’ll be fine.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but he smiles hard enough for it to hurt a little and touches her hand and she seems mollified then, sure that if there really were something wrong he wouldn’t be able to hide it from her for this long. He’s kind of painfully bad at concealing the truth of his frustrations, so he has no idea how he pulls this one off, but she gathers up the file and pats him gently on the shoulder and then stalks off to make some other lesser mortal very aware of their station in her presence.

Mike is really lucky to have friends like her. Sometimes Rachel feels like his only ally in this firm, more like him and quicker to understand how he feels than even Harvey ever could. But for all the comfort and support she provides, she can’t really push him like he needs. He could be content in friendships like the one he has with her, but never challenged to be more like he is with Harvey. It’s a lot easier to love Rachel, he thinks, but he needs them both pretty equally. And as he’s discovered lately - in vastly different ways.

He can’t help but feel guilty about missing those typos, even moreso to think that he didn’t pick up on them after he’d made them. He’s only human, he’s prone to error, but he’s never guilty of not seeing them. He remembers the night he’d taken that file home to prepare the motion. He remembers working on it at his kitchen counter at an ungodly hour of the morning, sitting in his boxers and a tshirt drinking coffee even though he intended to get some sleep as soon as he was done. He remembers that had been a night when he and Harvey had been at the office together until late, unusual in that Harvey had stayed after 6 at all. He remembers that they’d shared a cab home. He remembers that when they’d dropped Harvey off at his condo he’d leaned back into the car to remind Mike to have another file on his desk by the time he arrived in the next morning.

Mike remembers that when Harvey had leaned in, the first three buttons of his shirt having been pulled undone earlier in the evening in frustration at being stuck in the office so late, Mike had had a clear and perfect view of the base of Harvey’s throat, the sharp line of his collarbone where the shirt was pulled to one side by the motion of his leaning against the door of the cab. The soft rise of muscle between Harvey’s neck and his shoulder that dipped down into the soft, smooth hollow of skin above his clavicle, a gorgeous little point of skin and bone, at odds with the firm and supple muscle almost everywhere else. It looked strangely vulnerable on Harvey’s body, beneath the thick column of his throat, and Mike thought - oddly, absurdly - that if he could just put his hands there, press his mouth to that place, then he’d be close enough to Harvey that Harvey would understand, he’d feel it, feel how much Mike wanted, feel what Mike _meant_ , and wouldn’t push him away.

It’s really no wonder Mike is making stupid, obvious mistakes in his work. He’s making them everywhere else too.

 

 

________________________________

 

 

  
Eventually, and a lot sooner than Mike would like to admit, things come to a head. And not at all how Mike would like.

This time, it happens in court. During a trial.

Mike is second chair for the first time on one of Harvey’s cases and as Harvey’s second he has absolutely no responsibility or actual role to play because Harvey’s already got everything covered.

Except for himself, that is, because the deities at work must feel like Mike has managed to hang on to some small shred of his dignity and self control thus far. And we can’t have that, now, can we.

Harvey stands in front of Mike before they call their first witness and stretches across him to grab his stack of files from his briefcase resting on the table beside Mike. One side of his jacket has somehow gotten caught in the side of his belt, so it stays taught against his body and lifted to one side when he leans forward, leaving for Mike who has the only view of Harvey from this particular angle, the opportunity to be in a position to catch the lift of his shirt as it fights its way up out of Harvey’s waistband aided by the stretch of his waist across the desk. It’s a crisp white shirt, but Harvey favors the lightest materials because his jackets are generally pretty thick and heavy and so pulled across the cut of his hipbone as it rides the firm span of his waist it sits tight, giving Mike an almost sheer view of the supple gold skin it covers. It’s like it’s gift wrapped - Harvey’s body packaged by his clothes and presented to Mike to peel away the layers. Except Harvey’s shirt is ahead of him there, tugged up to flash a strip of irresistible, naked skin. Not covered by Harvey’s jacket or his suit or a towel or any combination thereof - just there. Right in front of Mike’s eyes, not even a hand-span from his face. If he leaned forward in his chair, just shifted his weight slightly onto the palms of his hands where they’ve fallen heavy on the table top, his mouth would brush the skin above Harvey’s hip, Mike’s lips on Harvey’s body, Harvey’s skin under Mike’s mouth.

Mike grits his teeth and curls his hands into fists until he can feel his fingernails cut into his palms and not even that sharp sting of pain is enough to deter it - he starts to get hard. In court. During a trial.

This is too much. This has gone on for too long and it’s starting to effect Mike’s job performance in ways that are going to become all too difficult to truly conceal sooner than Mike knows how to prevent that rapidly progressing process.

He tells Harvey he’ll follow him back to the office after they break for lunch and as he bites his knuckles hard enough to draw blood and comes into his fist hard enough to make his knees tremble in too-much, too-hot pleasure afterward, Mike drops his forehead to the wall of the courthouse bathroom stall and closes his eyes.

He vows then to himself, to anyone or anything that might be listening, that he’s going to put a stop to this once and for all. He’s going to make sure that he and Harvey maintain such distance, such absolute space from one another to the greatest boundaries their working relationship will allow, that he’ll forget what Harvey smells like, what he sounds like when he turns to speak to Mike so close that he doesn’t have to raise his voice above a whisper, how warm the press of his body is when he sits just a fraction too close to Mike in his office or in the car.

Mike is going to forget all of these things. And he’s going to make sure that the temptation to remember never catches up with him again.

 

 

______________________________________________

 

 

It’s one of the most difficult things he’s ever tried to do, and that worries Mike considering his long and extensive history of Doings Things The Hard Way, but at least he manages to succeed in this, he consoles himself.

On Monday morning he reports to Harvey’s office as usual - at the crack of midday when Harvey strides in, and having already done more than half a day’s work. He’s feeling a little thin skinned from all of the red bull on an empty stomach and it’s a pity that physical contact is generally the only thing that can calm the grating vibration of his bones at times like this. He stays at least four feet from Harvey at all times and switches between speaking to a spot somewhere over Harvey’s left shoulder and listening to Harvey’s replies while very carefully examining his own cuticles. Even when Harvey comes out from behind his desk and walks around to stand right in front of Mike, the toes of his shoes just starting to edge between those of Mike’s, Mike makes sure to look right into his eyes and nowhere else. He listens and he nods and he goes back to his own desk and builds himself an intricate nest of files and paper and staples and empty cans and he doesn’t leave it until it’s time to go home.

He doesn’t need to see Harvey again until late on Tuesday afternoon, when Donna emails him to say Harvey wants him to tag along on a client call, something about lunch and an hour of reassurance and rigorous placation that had better be worth Harvey’s thousand dollar an hour fee because this client is a big fish. Big enough that Mike spends twenty minutes in the bathroom before he goes to Harvey’s office, making sure his tie is straight and perfectly knotted and fixing his hair into the best approximation of ‘stylishly’ tousled he can manage. He resolutely does not react when Harvey gives him a friendly, appreciative once over and nods in apparent approval.

When they arrive at the restaurant the client is already waiting with his assistant and Mike is quick to slide into the chair closer to her, almost across the round table from where Harvey sits. He smiles and nods and recites facts and precedence to support the points Harvey makes when he’s called to do so, he is polite and articulate and above all else - professional.

Harvey asks him afterward if he’s okay, if everything is alright.

“Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

“You were quiet in there. You’ve been quiet all week. Are you coming down with something? Because we do not have time for an epidemic right now and if you get me sick -”

“I’m not sick, Harvey. I’m just …. busy.”

And he turns and walks away before he can further examine the unhappy set of Harvey’s mouth.

Miraculously, on Wednesday, Harvey is out of the office all day. He has some kind of engagement with a client that’s going to take all morning and then a court date set for the afternoon. He calls Mike to ask if he’d like to come with him to either or both and Mike can hear in his strained tone and carefully chosen words that he’s trying, can hear that he’s actually reaching out. It’s touching, and it’s a huge gesture coming from Harvey, so Mike’s chest aches for hours after he replies with a clipped ‘I don’t have time today, I’m sorry. But good luck for this afternoon.’

On Thursday Mike relents, just a little. A small concession to ease Harvey’s confusion without compromising his goal.

He drags his feet along the corridor that stretches for miles up to Harvey’s office like they’re made of lead but once he gets there, once he sees Harvey sitting behind his desk frowning at something on his blackberry like he could set the thing alight with just the power of his gaze, the weight lifts and Mike feels settled, surer of himself. And then Harvey looks up and sees him and his shoulders slump, just a fraction, and the frown falls away, taking away with it the set of little irritated creases at his brow but his face opens up for a second instead, clear except for a flicker of what looks like pain in his eyes and Mike feels wretched again in an instant, long after Harvey schools his expression back to calm, cold distaste that should feel familiar.

Donna gives him a dirty look, which he won’t even try to decipher, such is the depth of her dissatisfaction for him for reasons too vast and numerous for him to ever adequately catalogue. In retaliation he purposefully maintains eye contact with her as he breezes by her desk and pushes Harvey’s door open with neither permission nor invitation. Take _that_.

“I … uh … I have to go through all of the contracts for the Cole merger and Harold is sobbing too loudly for me to concentrate down there, can I … uh … work up here? I’ll be quiet.”

Harvey looks from his face to the stack of files in his hand and pulls open his desk drawer, takes out a brand new yellow highlighter and tosses it at him.

“I know. Knock yourself out.”

No quips, no smart comments, not even a stern reproach for rolling his shirt sleeves up like that when he’s told Mike a thousand times that the creases will strain the fabric.

They work in companionable silence that makes Mike happier than it should. Even though he chooses the furthest seat from Harvey he can - the far seat of the couch by the door - it’s still just so nice to be alone with him for a little while. Not thinking about him naked, not willing himself not to get turned on by the inappropriate desires that stirs, just sitting quietly but together. They even take a break to throw a baseball back and forth while Harvey talks out an angle he’s trying to work on one of their cases and Mike mostly just listens, occasionally gives him an encouraging push in the right direction when he can.

Some tension dissipates from the afternoon they spend in each other’s company and Mike finds himself almost looking forward to their drinks with clients as he gets ready the next evening. It’s a young client, an internet genius who only speaks in java or something, but his company president is some kind of major player on every social scene so he and Harvey are attending a very prestigious, very pretentious party they’re throwing in aid of some kind of site milestone that Mike doesn’t really understand, and one that Ben wouldn’t take the time to explain to him even when Mike had ventured all the way upstairs on his lunch break to ask.

He arrives and immediately finds Harvey, out of place in a sea of kids wearing tshirts and too-tight jeans even though he’s wearing jeans and a button down himself, which is probably as dressed down as he ever gets. He looks good. His jeans are the darkest blue, almost black and fitted to his calves and his shirt is a very expensive, very well cut dark blue plaid but plaid nonetheless and Mike has to take a minute to steel himself against that sight. Harvey looks younger than he should, uncomfortable and uneasy in his skin in a way that makes Mike want to reassure him. He doesn’t know how.

But he finds him in the crowd and they get drinks and talk quietly, not as easily as they usually do but far easier than it’s been lately, and they say hello to the client and he smiles for what Mike can only assume from experience is the first time ever and all things considered it's a comfortable evening, easy and loose if not a little too much so, drifting.

They leave early and wait together on the kerb outside, Harvey for Ray and Mike for a cab even though Harvey offers him a ride. They keep their hands in their pockets and Harvey’s are still, his whole body stiff but Mike’s fingers are restless, thrumming with a need to fix something that he can’t even name.

 _They_ feel wrong. Off kilter, they’ve lost the balance that kept Mike in time. He didn’t think it hinged so heavily on close personal contact, on straying into one another’s space and staying too close, too familiar, too tempting now.

It sits heavy in Mike’s stomach, drowned in expensive beer and thick regret.

He can’t fix it like he wants because what he wants wouldn’t fix anything - it’s the very root of this problem, the cause of all of this.

He has to stay out of reach, somewhere he can concentrate, for the sake of his job - both of their jobs. He needs to maintain his distance to make sure he stays sharp, to make sure he is what Harvey needs and nothing that’s going to disrupt the perfectly balanced, brilliantly propitious force they make.

It’s just his luck that doing the only thing he could to protect that seems to have come at the cost of the very rhythm that made them what they were.

 

 

 

___________________________________________

 

 

 

Mike has what can only be described as a truly shitty weekend. He stays home and mopes and sulks and then mopes some more only really taking breaks to sulk.

Harvey doesn’t call or text and Mike wants to feel relief at not having to make excuses or ignore the often abusive and always pointless texts Harvey sends him when they’re not in work. He wants to be grateful for not having to feel torn and sorry when he hits the ‘ignore’ button like he has been all too often lately. But instead he feels empty, at a loss. He finds himself wanting Harvey to call and text even if he’s only going to force himself to ignore it. He finds himself craving consideration. He finds himself put out to think that he’s not on Harvey’s mind, even when he knows he should be pleased about the fact that Harvey isn’t confused and hurt by his distancing himself lately. He _knows_ he should be glad that Harvey’s over it, has forgotten about it, but he’s as far from happy as he can be to think that Harvey might have forgotten about _him_. It’s selfish and it’s slightly cruel, maybe, nothing Mike is at all proud of or even really fully able to understand, but just struggling to not act on his feelings for Harvey has been the most complicated and painfully exquisite press of emotion he’s ever found in himself. As much as he would never want to hurt or disappoint Harvey, doesn’t want to get hurt himself, he has to admit that it feels like something that would have been more than worth that risk.

As much as he knows it’s safer, easier, better this way ….. he can’t help but mourn the loss of something he’d never really have had a chance to experience anyway.

 

  
_________________________________________________

 

 

And then Mike is snapped out of his spectacular melancholy by what is a decidedly unexpected turn of events.

He gets into the office on Monday morning and finds Harvey already there. And waiting for him. At 6.30am. He’s sitting in Mike’s horrible squeaky chair, at Mike’s cheap but sturdy desk, so out of place against the drab greys of cubicle town that Mike stops in his tracks and gasps at the sight. Harvey hears him and looks up from where he’s honest to god _lounging_ in Mike’s chair, making it look not only possible in a way that Mike has never managed but _good_ besides, easy and relaxed. He rises smoothly to his feet, picks up a coffee from the desk and leans forward to hand it to Mike, venturing far enough into his space that Mike gets just a hint of those same scents that had almost undone him in Harvey’s bedroom. Harvey manages to smell somehow clean and warm, familiar and yet achingly foreign, something Mike knows just the beginnings of, wants to know in absolute, thorough detail.

Mike reaches for the cup without thinking and their fingers overlap.

It’s too early, too close, too much like everything he wants and he feels the contact like an electric shock, a sweet burning flush that floods his skin and leaves him blushing.

It’s too early.

“Morning, Mike.”

And Harvey is smiling at him in a way that Mike can only think to describe as _sweet_. It should look strange and unnatural on him, but Mike is utterly dismayed to find it nothing but unfairly attractive.

“Good morning.”

He can’t keep the slightly sullen note from his tone, but Harvey just smiles a little wider and doesn’t let go of the cup, his fingers nestled around Mike’s for a long and excruciating moment until Mike pulls away.

“Why the hell are here so early? Isn’t this the middle of the night for you?”

“It’s great to see you too, Rookie, really just wonderful to find you’re still such a respectful and polite young man.”

He raises an eyebrow pointedly and his mouth tightens on one side, curves into the kind of smirk that Mike wants to lick from his lips and jesus christ how has this happened, how has all of his hard work been undone in five fucking seconds, this is impossible, this is unacceptable, Mike needs to be somewhere else and fast, preferably before this exchange ever took place.

“Sorry, Harvey. It’s ….. early. I have a lot to do today, so thanks for the coffee, I’ll see you later?”

Harvey laughs at him, and it’s a full and dark timbre that reaches out and winds itself around Mike’s throat, sets the hair on the back of his neck on end in the wake of a shiver that falls down his spine.

“You’ll see me sooner than that,” Harvey says and it sounds like a promise.

Mike sits down heavily at his desk and tries not to notice that his chair is still warm.

 

  
___________________________

 

 

  
It turns out to have been more like a threat, in the end, because over the next two days Harvey is everywhere all the time. He doesn’t come in early again, but he stays late the next night even though he has no real reason to, busies himself with very obviously watching Mike work in his office under the guise of some stack of paperwork that could definitely wait till next month or next year.

At first Mike thinks he’s just staying close to see that Mike’s okay, to try and figure out why he got so distant and cold all of a sudden. He thinks he’s just worried.

But the thing is - Harvey isn’t staying far enough away to objectively observe.

He’s constantly straying right into Mike’s space, putting his hands on him whenever he can, when they’re walking through the hallways together, when they’re exchanging files, when Harvey thinks Mike’s shirt or jacket needs to be straightened or fixed - which seems to be every five minutes.

It’s gotten to the point that after just two days of this, Mike’s body feels strange _without_ the warm weight of Harvey’s hands on him.

Mike has cut caffeine out of his diet entirely, because he’s shaking enough without out.

Except for when Harvey’s hands find his skin, because then …. then he falls still. It’s like he snaps to attention when he feels him, instantly focused on nothing else but the touch. Mostly Harvey’s fingers don’t wander beyond the edges of Mike’s shirt or the lapels of his jacket but on Monday afternoon he moves to button Mike’s shirt sleeve where he must have forgotten to do so himself that morning, and Harvey’s fingers slip up underneath the cuff, never really making contact with Mike’s skin but the warm threat is there and Mike stammers for an hour afterward. On Tuesday evening, when they’re alone together in the mostly dark office, Harvey grabs Mike’s wrist again, this time to check his watch for the time and it doesn’t make sense, he shouldn’t do it, he has his own watch and it’s far nicer than Mike’s, probably somehow tells the time better, but he ignores it to cup Mike’s wrist in his hand, to wrap his fingers around it and pull his sleeve higher to reveal the face, to strip away the very last of Mike’s resolve and Mike holds his breath for three four five six seconds and then he looks up into Harvey’s eyes, drags his eyes there like he can’t possibly look anywhere else and Harvey is just staring at him, holding his wrist in his hand and looking into his eyes, waiting again, for what Mike hasn’t got a _clue_ but whatever it is he can have it, it’s his, it’s ….

“It’s late. You should get going, I can finish up here,” Harvey says and Mike feels like a puppet unstrung.

He goes home and practically falls into the shower, faucet turned as cold as it can go. He stays there, palms and forehead pressed to the freezing wet tile until he can’t tell the beat of the water on the back of his neck from the dull thud of his heart in his chest.

 

  
_______________________________________________

 

 

  
The only thing that makes sense to Mike is the idea that somehow Harvey has found out. He realizes that Mike is utterly, hopelessly attracted to him and he’s amused by it. He thinks it’s hilarious. He makes it his latest and favorite form of entertainment, because toying with Mike has always been a fond pastime of his but messing with his head _and_ his heart? That must be comedy gold for Harvey.

Mike wants to be indignant and offended and a whole host of righteous and furious terms besides that mean he’s outraged and not about to put up with this, but he can’t muster up the energy to be anything other than just mostly deflated, maybe a little embarrassed at best.

He’s torn. He doesn’t really believe Harvey could be this cruel, not truly. But he keeps it up, increases the pressure, even, until something snaps.

On Wednesday afternoon they’re working together quietly side by side on Harvey’s couch. The whole office is quiet because there’s a company picnic and soft ball game that Harvey had miraculously been able to get them out of because they have prep to do for a trial that starts next week. They’re completely on top of it, as they are with all things, but nobody needs to see Kyle gloat about how his college baseball career has paid off any more than he already does and certainly not with a legitimately appropriate arena in which to do so, so they’re going over everything one last time, making sure they haven’t missed anything.

And then Harvey takes off his jacket.

And the thing is, all week Mike has been slowly and terribly growing accustomed to the idea of Harvey near _his_ skin, close and warm against _his_ body. He’s come to accept that, to find comfort and ease in it.

But Harvey’s body, Harvey’s skin …. that’s a notion he’s kept pushed as far from his perception and knowledge as he feasibly can with his mind. Mostly that has meant layering over it with other ideas, other tasks, other points of interest and when even that won’t work - hiding in the chaos and confusion of Harvey touching him.

Here in an empty office, he has nowhere to hide.

Harvey stands and tucks the collar of his shirt under that of his suit jacket, taking his lapels in hand to pull them apart and away from his shoulders. As he does, he accidentally keeps hold of the collar of his shirt, and when he pulls the first button pops open. And then the second. The shirt stays in place otherwise when he lets his jacket fall down his arms and folds it over the back of the couch where he’d just been sitting, which is way too close to Mike, so when he leans in Mike gets not only a clear view of those perfect, mouth-watering collarbones but that accompanied by Harvey’s scent, dizzyingly faint but there, right here, making Mike’s head swim.

And in that instant Mike loses control. He can’t hold it back, can't stave it off.

He clears his throat, swallows around the lump lodged there and stands up abruptly, pushes past Harvey with a rushed ‘Restroom, be right back’ and he barely remembers getting to the closest one, pushing in to the stall and swinging the door closed behind him. All he knows is that he needs to get off, he needs to deal with this the only way he knows how and right now that means jerking off at work and he’s okay with that if it means he can sit in a room with Harvey and only worry about feeling faintly guilty instead of turned inside out with lust, completely out of his mind and powerless to it.

He gets his belt undone with the hand that isn’t pressing the heel of his palm up against his mostly hard cock through his trousers and then he gets them down, pushes his boxers down to join them mid-thigh and his forehead thunks forward against the wall of the stall when he finally, finally gets a hand slick with his own spit around himself. The relief is immense and he has to pause for a second just to remember how to breathe, to keep his hand low and tight around his shaft, warm and wet and good. And then he thinks about why he’s here, why he’s doing this and he starts to jack himself in earnest to thoughts of Harvey and nothing else, because he doesn’t have the time or patience for pretense right now.

He thinks about Harvey standing before him while he sits on the couch, just like they’d been before, except this time Harvey doesn’t stop at his jacket. His fingers work deftly at the buttons of his shirt and the zipper on his trousers and he doesn’t take either off but he leaves them open, showing Mike what he wants to see, what he wants to touch. And Mike thinks about touching him, then, about getting his hands on Harvey’s skin, the palms of his hands pushing up over the ripple of his abs. He thinks about getting a hand up over the hard press of Harvey’s shoulder, using the hold to tug him down onto his knees over Mike on the couch, how warm he’d be, how amazing he’d smell so close, so near for Mike to touch and taste.

And then for the first time, Mike thinks about kissing Harvey.

He thinks about leaning up to push his mouth to Harvey’s, about dragging his tongue across the press of Harvey’s lips until they parted to let him dip his tongue inside, Harvey nipping at the tip of his tongue with his teeth, sharp and gentle until he soothed all that away with the soft skin of his lips, closing around Mike’s tongue, sucking on it. He thinks they’d be teasing kisses at first, cruel and maddening until they forgot about anything other than getting closer, learning the taste and feel of one another.

Mike has to bring his forearm up to muffle his mouth against as he tightens his fist and pushes up into it thinking about Harvey’s mouth instead.

And he’s just about to come thinking about Harvey on his knees for him, can already feel his balls draw up and the beginnings of pleasure crest over in wet little spurts of pre-come, when the stall door opens.

Mike forgot to lock it.

Harvey strides right in and locks it for Mike, this time. And Mike pauses, starts to pull his hand away and pull his trousers up and apologize profusely and beg and plead for Harvey not to fire him.

But Harvey pushes him to face the wall again with one hand on his shoulder and he comes to stand behind him, cages him in with his body pressed right up against the length of Mike’s back and Mike’s cock twitches in his hand, even though his grip has fallen slack.

Harvey fixes that too. He lays his hand on top of Mike’s and guides it around Mike’s cock again, drags their fingers together up and down the length of him and at the same time pushes his hips against Mike’s ass, pushes him forward into their fists and Mike can feel Harvey hard behind him and his hand speeds up of it’s own accord because he doesn’t care if he gets fired for this, because this is what he _wants_ and he doesn’t understand why he gets to have it like this, but he’s going to take it any way it comes.

Harvey’s hand stays warm around Mike’s but he lets him control the pace and it’s not long before Mike is almost, almost there.

And then Harvey leans in, drags his mouth up the length of Mike’s neck and whispers in his ear, speaks for the first time since Mike made his excuses and ran from the room.

“What are you thinking about, Mike?” he says, and it’s curious, wondering, not disgusted or disappointed or any of the things that Mike has been imagining for weeks now and he almost sobs with relief, but manages to turn it into a mere broken whimper instead.

“ _You_ ,” he gasps, and Harvey’s grip on his shoulder, the hand around his cock tightens and Harvey’s mouth falls open against the side of his throat and Mike is coming into their hands and across Harvey’s wrist.

He looks down at the wet ribbons of his come striping the bare, exposed skin of Harvey’s wrist and his cock jerks, the arousal too much too soon and pleasantly painful. He is so gone, so utterly keyed in to Harvey and his absurdly attractive body and his wit and his intelligence and the sharp, pleased way he looks at Mike sometimes like Mike has impressed him and he’d be embarrassed by it all were it not for the fact that Harvey is still pressed right up against him, warm all along his back with his forehead pressed to Mike’s shoulder, his fingers still loose around Mike’s cock.

“Harvey,” Mike begins, except he has no idea what he means to say then.

“Don’t,” Harvey says, the words murmured into Mike’s shoulder, and Mike freezes instantly but Harvey’s free hand drops to curl around his waist, to pull Mike back against him.

“Just not here. Get cleaned up and go home and get some fucking rest for once and we’ll talk about this tomorrow, okay? It’s …. everything’s okay. Good, even,” and Mike can hear how Harvey’s smile shapes that last part.

Mike takes a deep breath and nods then, waits until Harvey’s hands and the warmth of his body pull away before he can open his eyes. He stays still and listens to Harvey wash up and then he cleans up the mess they’d made together and goes home to do as Harvey said.

 

 

  
____________________________________________________________

 

 

  
Shockingly, Mike is actually able to sleep that night. It’s like the weight of his guilt has been lifted. It’s been replaced with a heavy dew of hope and uncertainty, but compared to what Mike has been carrying around these past couple of weeks, it’s nothing at all to worry about.

At work the next day he feels like he’s returning after being somewhere else entirely lately. He walks around all morning comfortable and sure of himself and his place here in a way he has missed, he finds.

Even when Harvey arrives in, Mike is able to keep things as they always are, to patiently wait for Harvey to help him deal with this however he means to. Because the fact that Harvey helped to jerk him off yesterday is _nothing_ on the fact that Harvey went on to tell him that everything was okay. Mike doesn’t get it yet, but that’s okay, he trusts Harvey.

Some tension starts to bleed back into his bones when it gets to 6pm and Harvey still hasn’t said anything not strictly work related, but then Harvey comes to find Mike before he leaves for the night.

“Are you busy tomorrow night?” Harvey is _fidgeting_. He’s standing in front of Mike’s cubicle when he looks up, his briefcase in one hand and his thumb swiping restlessly back and forth across the screen of his blackberry in the other. But when Mike looks up into his face, Harvey is smiling a kind of smile that Mike’s never seen before. It’s small and blinding, like he’s trying to hold back a wealth of something that he doesn’t want to let spill out and away just yet. It's bashful, a kind of quiet private pleasure that he's letting Mike see, that he's smiling for Mike. 

Mike thinks that if he weren’t already a little bit in love with Harvey, that smile would do it.

“After work? No? Not unless you need me to do something?”

 _Professionalism above all else_ , he thinks to himself, _don’t assume, don’t set yourself up for -_

Harvey laughs.

“Don’t sprain something there, kid. I believe we have some things to discuss. We can order in, I’ll feed and water you, and we’ll get everything straight. Okay?”

“Tomorrow night?” Mike asks, but he isn’t asking that at all.

“Yeah,” Harvey says.

“Come home with me.”

 

  
________________________________

 

 

 

Friday is horrific.

It’s quite possibly the worst day of Mike’s life to date. Except for how it’s also potentially one of the best.

Harvey is nothing but his usual, stoic, feeling-free self. He argues with Mike, he treats him like he’s an exceptionally dumb child (minus the kindness) and he makes him do all of the trivial, menial tasks he considers himself too good to deal with. He also listens to everything Mike says, trusts him to act on it and has Donna send one of her minions to Mike with red bull every other hour and his favorite sandwich at lunch time. Two of them.

Everything is completely normal and exactly what Mike wanted more than anything after he saw Harvey naked and promptly lost his mind and nearly lost a whole lot more besides, but now that it’s back, now that he knows he doesn’t have to let this go - he feels safer than he ever has before. If having feelings for Harvey hasn’t cost him what they have, nothing can. Even if everyone finds out he’s a fraud and he loses his job and Jessica has him thrown in jail and / or eats some of his internal organs, Mike figures he could live with any of that once he knows Harvey is likely to still stick around. And as much as whatever they may or may not be about to do is for the sake of attraction and what will doubtlessly be perversely hot sex, there’s also an element to expanding their relationship that means adding ties that bind outside of work and the idea that Harvey is interested and invested in him as more than just his lowly associate makes Mike’s heart hurt like it’s suddenly too big for his body.

But that’s probably just the red bull. Maybe.

That’s certainly what he blames when Rachel asks him why he’s smiling so much, and again when Donna snaps at him for staring into space. They both eye him suspiciously when he holds the elevator for Louis that afternoon when generally everyone on the floor greatly looks forward to and delights in the opportunity to let the doors slide shut in his face and later pretend they hadn’t seen him.

By the time 6pm rolls around, Mike is kind of sick of people asking him what on earth he has to be so happy about, in the sense that he is not at all sick of getting to think about the answer to that question while refusing to say anything at all.

Mike has to drop some documents off with Donna before he leaves, so he heads up to meet Harvey in his office and they’re silent as they leave the office, on the way back to Harvey’s condo, as Harvey drops a change of clothes into Mike’s hands and pushes him gently into the guest bathroom before he disappears into his own en suite.

It’s a charged silence. Comfortable and nothing Mike wants to fill or escape, but fraught and full, pulsing with a thousand things that words couldn’t ever contain. It’s not the first or tenth time that Mike has come over to Harvey’s after work and showered and changed into his too big sweats and too tight Harvard tshirts before they sit down to eat out of boxes and carry on in their mission to fix the world one ludicrous lawsuit at a time. This time, Mike can barely stand still long enough to rinse the coconut and lime shampoo Harvey buys for him out of his hair. He feels like he’s going to shake right out of his skin, half fear, half pure adrenaline and he’s been so patient, he’s waited all day and all week and all month and maybe all year and he wants this and more than that he wants it to be something that Harvey wants.

They talk quietly as they eat dinner, although Mike barely does more than pick half-heartedly at his praew wan mu. They talk about work, about baseball, about everything they have in common besides _this_ and when Mike finally gives up and pushes his plate away, Harvey sighs.

“You have the patience of a particularly excitable lemur.”

“Oh, so now we can address the large animals in the room?”

Harvey frowns.

“Lemurs are quite small. Adorable, really.”

Mike absolutely does not smile or blush because he’s a capable and handsome young man, used to hearing this, and with a clear aim in mind here.

“Elephants though, they’re kind of dangerous, don’t you think? If you forget about them, someone might get crushed.”

And he hadn’t really meant to say it quite like that, hadn’t meant to show his hand so early, but he’s also pretty sure that he’s about as transparent as the walls of Harvey’s ridiculous elevator, so in for a penny in for a pound.

Harvey frowns again, but it’s softer, pained.

“Chunky monkey or phish food?”

“Still with the animal references? This is starting to get kind of weird, I don’t know if I -”

“Mike if we have to have a heart to heart we’re going to do it right and like the teenagers that you really are. Over ice cream.”

“Oh. Hey! Phish food. Duh.”

Harvey laughs pointedly at that last part and Mike concedes with a sheepish grin.

They settle back down onto the couch with their bowls and spoons and Mike almost forgets why they’re here for the sake of hunting down all the solid chocolate fishes in his bowl but then Harvey raises his eyebrows at him as he licks his spoon clean and right, right, he’s maybe a little bit in love with his devastatingly gorgeous and capable boss who almost drove him out of his mind with lust and then kind of jerked him off and almost drove him out of his mind with want and there is the distinct possibility that tonight might end in some more of all of that and really the most Mike can hope for here is that he _survives_.

“Why do I have to go first?”

“Because if I do it’s sexual harassment.”

“I would never -”

“Then you have to go first because I don’t really have a lot to say. I don’t know how or why or when this began for you, or how you feel about what happened, or what you want from this - from me.”

Mike bites a fish in half and sucks on it while he thinks about how to reply to that with anything other than a shouted ‘EVERYTHING’ and maybe some helpful hand motions.

“I’m okay with what happened. But are you?”

“Very much so.”

“I don’t know if I know how or why I started looking at you differently, but if I’m being honest here I’ve probably always …. wanted, to some extent. And then, uh, you remember that weekend when we had to go to that super dumb yacht party?”

“Yes?”

“Remember how you were kind of almost all the way naked and I was in the same room as you at that time?”

“Yes?”

“I maybe …. left a little bit of my sanity in your bedroom that day. Maybe I could pick it up while I’m here.”

“Or maybe you could leave some more behind.”

Harvey’s grin is sharp and sure, but reigned in like all of his smiles have been lately, like he doesn’t want to let go completely, not yet.

“What about you? Why did you ….. do you?”

“You’re such an articulate young man, you’ve got such a concise and clear grip on the art of information and syntax, one might almost suspect you were cognitively gifted.”

“You know what I mean!”

“I’ve always wanted you. Since the day I met you and your smart, perfect mouth.”

Harvey says it like …. like it’s common knowledge, like it’s a perfectly normal admission to make, like Mike isn’t struggling to remember how to breathe right now.

“You - why didn’t you _say_ something?”

“I didn’t feel like the situation was potentially one I might win. You never showed any interest, _you_ never said anything …. I was ready to give up and move on, really, but I thought I’d find out for sure first.”

“I couldn’t say anything! You’re my boss! You’re _gorgeous_ and you’re older and smarter and **better** than me and I -”

Harvey laughs then, but it isn’t mean or loud. He takes Mike’s bowl out of his hands and places it with his own on the coffee table and then he reaches out and takes hold of Mike with one hand at his waist and one on his wrist and he pulls him in so he’s sitting sideways on the couch, so Harvey can shift to face him.

“Listen to me when I say this, because I’m only willing to do so considering how absurdly happy I am right now and you’re not likely to hear it all the time or anything, but you … you make me doubt myself. Nobody has ever been able to do that, and it’s a good thing, Mike. You made me wonder for damn near a year if I would ever be someone that you looked at and saw not as a boss, or a mentor, but an equal. I hold a lot of the cards here, but only according to how _I_ play the game, and that doesn’t have to be something that’s relevant for you. You don’t need this job. All you needed was a little direction, and you have that now. You could do anything, be anything. You don’t need me. I’m hoping you stick around because you want to, but you don’t have to. I’m hoping you will, because I want you to.”

“Harvey,” Mike whispers, and he turns his hand palm up in Harvey’s grip, tugs until their fingers are laced together between them.

“I’m here and I’m staying here because of you. Because you helped me and because I think I can help you. We work together in ways that still amaze me a year later, and I’ll never understand why you took such a chance on me, _for_ me, and I’m grateful that you did, but none of this is anything to do with that. I love working for you, I think we make a real difference together and no matter what happens I want that to continue, but if we can make that work in the office, I think we’d have exponential potential everywhere else. I’m interested in pursuing both of those avenues, but if you only want one, if you think we can’t have both …. then I’ll quit. You mean more to me than any career or opportunity and I’d rather take a chance on that than never know.”

“So we …...”

“Yeah, _we_ ,” Mike says, and he cups Harvey’s face in both hands and can barely stand to close his eyes, to stop looking into Harvey’s when he leans in to kiss him. But Harvey’s mouth is soft and reverent under his and Mike has to let his eyes slip shut, has to wind his hands up into Harvey’s hair and climb mostly into his lap so he can kiss him breathless. Harvey kisses slow and chaste, presses his lips to Mike’s like all he needs is that small contact, the soft touch of Mike’s mouth. He kisses Mike like he’s something precious, and it’s so sweet it makes Mike’s head swim but it also sends hot shivers through him, jolted little reminders that everything he wants is right here in his hands and he can’t help himself, he clenches his fingers in Harvey’s hair just this side of too hard and closes his teeth around Harvey’s bottom lip, sucks at it until Harvey groans and lets his mouth fall open and this, this is what Mike wanted - his tongue in Harvey’s mouth and his hands in Harvey’s hair and Harvey’s hands tugging him down against him when Mike starts to rock his hips down into Harvey’s.

Harvey breaks the kiss but Mike just lets him turn his face to side, trails his mouth along the curve of his jaw, noses down his throat and starts to unbutton Harvey’s shirt.

“Mike, you … before we .. you have to know something,” and Mike pulls back at that, because Harvey’s voice is serious, if a little breathless. He settles back in Harvey’s lap, shifts his ass down against Harvey’s cock hardening underneath him and Harvey’s hands clench in the sides of Mike’s tshirt.

“I had ample time to get dressed that day. I wasn’t running late. I .. I spent my morning jerking off thinking about you, thinking about all the things I want to do to you every time I have you here, and then when I was showering I ran through all the things I could do and say to figure out if you might ever be attracted to me, and I thought about the situation reversed - what would utterly undo me if the tables were turned, and I … I planned on you seeing me naked. I had no idea it would effect you the way it did, I couldn’t have imagined that it would, but I still … it was my fault. I did it on purpose.”

Mike considers that. He thinks it all through, although admittedly he probably unfairly allocates the majority of his attention to the idea of Harvey jerking off thinking about him, but he decides he’s okay with everything that happened, and how it did.

“You know I don’t just want you for your body, right? Do we need to have a self esteem talk, Harvey?”

Harvey’s exasperated huff would be a whole lot more effective if his hands weren’t currently working their way up under Mike’s shirt.

“You said it drove you crazy, I just wanted you to know that that wasn’t my intention.”

“Oh,” Mike murmurs, unbuttoning Harvey’s shirt and dragging his mouth down into the v of his collarbones, sucking a kiss to the hollow there.

“You didn’t intend for me to go home that night and touch myself thinking about touching you instead? You didn’t intend to become the main feature in every single one of my fantasies since? You didn’t start touching me all the fucking time at work so that I’d be pretty much conditioned to get hard every time I saw or felt so much as a hint of your skin?”

“Well I can’t say those are unfavorable developments, but no, I didn’t think it’d have that kind of effect on you. Best case scenario I thought you’d think I had a fantastic body and that you wouldn’t mind exploring it if the opportunity presented itself.”

“Wouldn’t mind? Wouldn’t _mind_?” Mike has Harvey’s shirt completely open now, and his palms find warm skin in the wake of it when he pushes it off Harvey’s shoulders. Mike shudders in Harvey’s lap, shakes at the thought of feeling this body against his own.

“Harvey,” Mike begins, and it sounds pleading, broken.

“You could give me the choice of anyone in the whole world right now, and I’d choose to be here with you every single time,” he says, and forces himself to look Harvey in the eye as he does, because it’s embarrassing and cheesy and _true_ and he wants Harvey to know this and everything else that Mike feels for him.

Harvey smiles at him, wide-eyed and quiet for once, like he can’t believe any of this and Mike knows the feeling.

“Okay, Rookie. In that case, hold on.”

“I’ll show you ‘Rookie’ … what are you -”

Harvey’s hands slip under Mike’s thighs and lift him, pull his legs around Harvey’s waist as Harvey rises from the couch and then he’s carrying him to his bedroom. Mike finds that he really, really likes the fact that Harvey can manhandle him like this, that he can feel the generous stretch of muscle across Harvey’s shoulders when he winds his arms around his neck and kisses him. They get a little distracted in the hallway, when Mike sucks on Harvey’s tongue and Harvey pushes him up against the wall so he can push his hands down the back of his sweatpants and rut up against him, but eventually they make it and Harvey goes up on his knees on the bed, tips Mike down onto his sheets.

Harvey’s bed is ridiculously large, covered in plain white bedding and white pillows so soft that Mike is suddenly, strangely pleased to think that Harvey’s skin is so well clothed and cared for even while he sleeps.

Harvey doesn’t move for a moment, just falls forward so he’s on his hands and knees on the bed and Mike is underneath him, his thighs still wrapped up around Harvey’s hips, and looks down at Mike.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you have any idea how much I’ve thought about this? How often I’ve wondered what you’d look like spread out across my sheets?”

“Probably about as often as I’ve thought about the very same thing?” Mike hazards.

Harvey laughs at him, low and dark, and leans down to bite lightly at his jaw.

“All I can think about is fucking you. Every day, every hour, every time we’re within thirty feet of one another. I think about pushing you up against walls, dragging you down onto the couch in my office, following you into bathroom stalls ….”

“You should always trust your instincts, Harvey.”

Mike is going to die here in this bed. He feels hot all over, the heavy weight of Harvey’s gaze and the ache of his words clenching warm want in Mike’s stomach. He’s going to come just from the things Harvey is saying if they don’t get out of their clothes within the next ten seconds. He pushes up onto his elbows and starts to tug at Harvey’s belt and pants, and why for the love of god why couldn’t Harvey just wear sweatpants like everyone else because he gets Mike’s down and takes his underwear with it in about three seconds and Mike is still struggling with Harvey’s belt buckle. Their hands tangle when Harvey helps and they work together to get his pants and boxers down and off and thank god he’d stayed bare foot after his shower because Mike doesn’t have enough blood left in his brain to figure out shoes right now. Harvey tugs his tshirt up over his head and then they’re naked together, finally, finally.

Harvey drops down so that his elbows take his weight on either side of ribs, and Mike lifts his shoulders so they can get closer, so he can feel more of Harvey’s skin pressed warm against his.

“You’re gorgeous, you know,” Harvey says, and leans in to kiss him again, can’t seem to go longer than a couple of minutes without doing so and this is so different than how Mike imagined they’d be together, so much better. He’d thought they be rushed and messy the first time, perfectly rushed and satisfyingly messy. Instead, it’s torturously slow. He feels every single brush of Harvey’s fingertips across his shoulders, down along his biceps, across his chest. Harvey’s skin against his feels like acres, thousands of tiny points of contact that burst bright under Mike’s skin like fireworks. Mike feels Harvey’s chest rise and fall against his, every push of breath held and released as they kiss like they’re drowning in it.

Harvey’s mouth softens against Mike’s like he could hear what he was thinking and Mike blinks up at him. Harvey’s head falls forward and Mike watches him look down at the length of their bodies pressed together, feels the sharp intake of breath when Mike plants his feet against the mattress and shifts underneath Harvey, rocks up into him so that their cocks slide together trapped between them.

Mike gets a hand between their hips and swipes his thumb across the head of Harvey’s cock, collects the bead of pre-come gathered there and watches Harvey’s eyes track the movement when he brings his hand up to his mouth and sucks his thumb clean with an obscene curl of his tongue.

“Jesus. Are you trying to kill me?”

“Nope. Can I suck your cock?”

Mike has this habit of getting very unexpectedly blunt and honest in bed. It’s ten times worse with Harvey because he can’t think at all beyond what he wants and can’t stop himself from asking for it.

“You can’t -”

Harvey closes his eyes, nostrils flaring on a deep intake of breath.

“You can’t just _say_ things like that, Mike,”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll always give you anything you ask for, and if you ask for things like that neither of us will ever leave this room again.”

“I’m okay with that,” Mike says, and then he pushes Harvey over onto his back, slaps him on the thigh until he scoots up against the pillows.

“You’re abusive and demanding in bed. I’m shocked.”

“You’re lucky, is what you are,” Mike says, and presses his face in between the flat of Harvey’s pelvis and the cut of his hipbone as he jacks his cock. He trails his mouth down along the tempting little line of fine hair the leads down beneath Harvey’s stomach and then looks up at Harvey as he licks across the head of his cock and then lets his mouth fall in a slow slide down his cock. Mike _loves_ doing this. He takes Harvey’s cock deep enough to feel it push against the back of his throat, so he chokes just a little, just enough to make his mouth water and spill saliva down the length of Harvey’s shaft. Harvey shifts up onto his elbows above him and swears, bites down on his lip hard enough that Mike can see it pulled white with the pressure from here. Mike moans around his cock at the sight and Harvey jerks in his mouth, his hands fisting in the sheets. Harvey shifts his hips restlessly, not pushing up but not able to stay still either. Mike thinks he’d really like to let Harvey fuck his mouth. He pulls off, hollows his cheeks and sucks his way back up.

“You should fuck my mouth next time,” he says, and then sinks back down, pushes the flat of his tongue up against the underside of Harvey’s cock and cups his balls in his hand, strokes the tip of his finger against the sensitive skin behind them and feels Harvey’s thighs tremble with the effort it’s taking him not to thrust up into Mike’s mouth.

“Fuck, Mike, get up here,” Harvey gasps, and Mike looks up to see him fumbling for lube and condom from the bedside table. Hell yes.

Mike crawls slowly up the length of Harvey’s body, tracks his progress with his hands, his mouth, his teeth on Harvey’s skin. The muscles across Harvey’s stomach ripple under his touch and Mike still can’t quite believe that Harvey has been hiding this body away under his suits for so long. He is very much looking forward to getting intimately acquainted with every last inch of it.

He finds that patch of skin at Harvey’s collarbone, the one that begged for his mouth the last time he got to see it, and he settles in there, presses his nose up against Harvey’s shoulder and breathes him in while Harvey’s hands trace the rise of his ribs, the span of his hips while tugs Mike into place with his ass snug in the dip of Harvey’s hips.

Mike reaches for the lube, starts to ask “Do you want me to -” but Harvey takes it from him and slaps him on the wrist before he can finish his sentence.

“Ah-ah. No you don’t. I want to do this. I want to watch you ride my fingers.”

Mike can make that happen.

Harvey uncaps the lube and warms it between his fingers before he parts Mike’s cheeks with his other hand and slowly pushes a finger into him. Mike tries to relax, sits up to catch Harvey’s mouth with his own and that angle makes the slide easier, opens him up for a second finger. It starts to sting just a little when Harvey scissors his fingers, twists them together and apart inside Mike, but he pushes into the burn, pushes back onto Harvey’s hand because the small shock of pain takes the edge off his want for a second, lets him be a little less mindless with it and a little more sharply aware of everything that’s happening in excruciating detail.

Harvey’s waist is warm and firm under his thighs, compact muscle that feels so good against Mike’s bonier body. Harvey’s skin is considerably darker than Mike’s, deep golden brown against Mike’s pale body. There’s a blush across Harvey’s cheekbones, a faint pink flush that looks gorgeous against his olive skin, framed by the sharp lines of his jaw and cheekbones. His eyes are huge, pupils blown and dark and his mouth has fallen open except for where the very edge of his bottom lip is pulled between his teeth again, caught red and plump and bruised against a stark white incisor. Christ, even his teeth are perfect. He’s like a Greek god, art carved from marble, nothing human or possible.

“You’re so fucking hot,” Mike says, leaning down to suck Harvey’s lip out from under the clench of his teeth and into his own mouth so he can lick away the little marks his teeth have made.

“You drive my crazy. I can’t even begin to deal with how much I want you,” Mike says, pushing back onto Harvey’s fingers and wordlessly begging for more with the the pleading set of his eyes.

“Fuck me, Harvey, please,” Mike says, dragging his hands down Harvey’s chest, his thumbs tripping along the cut of his abs.

Harvey _growls_ then, slowly pulls his fingers free and rolls the condom on, slicks himself up with more lube while he encourages Mike over onto his back again and goes to his knees between Mike’s thighs. Mike’s hips rise up off the bed and he tries to pull Harvey in with one ankle hooked behind his thigh. Harvey leans down to kiss him and drags his hands up Mike’s legs, gets his hands under his thighs and pulls them up high around his waist so Mike’s hips are held up by Harvey’s knees underneath them. He wraps a hand around the base of his cock and parts Mike’s cheeks with the other, holds the head of his cock up against Mike’s hole and just stays still like that until Mike lifts a hand to the headboard above him and starts to push down onto Harvey’s cock. Harvey shifts back and drags Mike down the bed so he can’t get leverage.

“No outside interference, Michael. Just us,” Harvey says, and starts to push slowly _in_.

“Just this,” Harvey says, as he bottoms out and Mike gasps, feels full and perfect when Harvey looks down at him in wonder, pleasure tight across his face.

Harvey gives him a minute to adjust but when Mike starts moving restlessly underneath him, pushing up for more, he pulls back, pulls out achingly slow. When he pushes back in it’s a little harder, feels somehow a little deeper and the muscle in his forearms flex when he lets his weigh falls forward, lets Mike shift down into his lap and onto his cock so they fit together better, so he can lean in and kiss Mike. Mike opens up underneath him, strains up to get at Harvey’s mouth. Harvey fucks him steadily, perfect hard little thrusts that he slows down sometimes so deliciously that Mike whimpers into his mouth, digs his fingers into Harvey’s biceps and clings to him, tries to pull him down and in. It’s not teasing, it’s exactly what Mike wants. Everything slowed down so he can feel it all, so he can wait for it all over again. He’s never felt anything like this - the huge magnitude of how much he wanted Harvey translating perfectly in the slide of their bodies together.

“Never,” Harvey whispers, “I never thought … I can’t believe - oh, god,” and his hand on Mike’s hip is a bruising hold, dragging Mike down onto him and keeping him there. Mike shifts as much as he can, flexes down and clenches around Harvey’s cock and then Harvey is gasping his name, jerking and coming inside him.

Mike can’t believe it either, can’t believe he now knows what it feels like for Harvey to come _inside him_ , knows the taste of his skin and the stretch of it against him, the press of his mouth to his throat and his shoulder, the way Harvey’s hands on his skin make him shiver and tremble.

Harvey recovers from the rush of his orgasm and looks down at Mike, stares down at him in perfect ecstasy and leans in to press his mouth to the hot curve of his throat as he gets a hand around Mike’s cock and starts to jerk him off, his fingers wet with lube, familiar and nothing at all like the first time.

He speaks, his voice muffled against Mike’s flushed, sweat slick skin, as his hand works tight and fast around Mike.

“Can’t believe we’re doing this, I can’t believe you let me, you wanted. You’re the best, the most I’ve ever had, the most I’ve ever felt. I thought I wanted you too much, Mike, thought getting you couldn’t ever compare but god, I was wrong. I was so wrong, you’re perfect, you’re gorgeous, want you to be _mine_ ,” and as he says that he pauses, frames Mike frantic pulse between his teeth and sucks, pulls a bruise up on Mike’s skin like that’s the best he can do, the most he can have from him.

He’s wrong.

“I’m for you,” Mike says, and he pushes his hand up into the short hair at the back of Harvey’s neck and holds him there, holds him still against his throat.

“And you’re for me,” he gasps, and Harvey’s wrist twists on an upstroke, his fingers just too tight around the head of his cock and Mike comes between them, comes with Harvey’s body heavy over his, his skin everywhere Mike wants it. Pleasure washes over him like a wave that drags him under and he can’t think, can’t see or speak for a second of pure white bliss.

When he comes back to himself, Harvey has pulled out but stayed close, is looking down at him in mild concern.

“Did I break you?”

“You _wish_ ,” Mike says, voice hoarse and wrecked.

“Why would I wish that?” Harvey asks, moving away to grab a cloth from the en suite so he can clean them both up. Mike lies still and content and lets him wipe at his stomach, at his thighs.

“Because, Harvey, maybe if you broke me then we wouldn’t have to do this four times a day every day for the rest of forever. I’m not sure you’re up to that.”

Harvey tosses the cloth into the sink and flops back down beside Mike, tips his head in to rest against Mike’s shoulder and laces their fingers together.

“That _was_ amazing, wasn’t it?”

“Definitely the best sex anyone has ever had, although I feel like we still have a lot of ground to cover. I’m not kidding. Four times minimum. We owe it to the world.”

“I’m very old, Michael. Old and weak and tired.”

“Says the man who practically threw me over his shoulder and carried me to bed not an hour ago,” and Mike smirks at all the possibilities for athletic sex that have opened up for him now that he’s dating someone so fit.

Harvey rolls on top of him and smiles down at him, a grin that spreads across his whole face, bright and vast and something Mike wants to work forever to keep there, but only for him. Harvey lifts a hand to brush Mike’s hair out of his eyes.

“I’m also a man who prefers prime numbers. I say we shoot for five.”

“Keep your clothes off as much as possible and I’ll see what I can do,” Mike murmurs, stretching up to try and kiss Harvey.

“I’m not sure nudity is welcomed at the office, unfortunately,” Harvey says, staying too far for Mike to reach until Mike somehow manages to flip them, taking advantage of Harvey’s post-sex brain and muscle melt to push him down into the pillows and climb on top, leaning down to press a kiss to his chin, his bottom lip.

“That won’t be a problem,” he says, smiling as he kisses Harvey properly, grinning then when Harvey kisses back with enthusiasm and then some.

“We’re never leaving this bedroom again. I know you're a really great lawyer and everything and it's sad to think about all the rich people who are going to lose tiny fractions of their fortunes without you, but we've found our true calling, we have reached Olympus. The deeds of men are no longer our concern, for we, Harvey Specter, are sex gods. A somber and cumbersome duty, but we must do as the fates will. I'm sure Jessica will understand.”

"Ah. I feared this day would come. I have an 'unexpectedly revealed to be the god of all pleasure' clause in my contract, thank goodness." 

"Oh good!" 

"It only covers me though, you're on your own. Maybe I'll take you on as my pleasure apprentice." 

"Apprentice!? How dare you. We're a team! I might be your kept boy at the office, but here under this hallowed headboard we are one and the same. You're nothing without me." 

Harvey knocks Mike's elbows out from underneath him so he falls with an 'ooph!' and lands solidly on Harvey's chest, tucks his head up under Harvey's chin when Harvey wraps one arm around his waist to hold him close and smoothes his other hand up and down Mike's back, trailing his fingers slowly along his spine. 

"I'll concede to that." 

Mike smiles and settles, feels Harvey do the same under him. 

"When we wake up you can tell me more about this 'kept boy' position." 

 

 

 

 

 

  
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End file.
